September 28th 2020

Chapter 272
Their Party For Friends

Waiting for Maya's return from the Hex, Lucas found himself joining a cluster of their friends, sitting under the big tree by the house. When he had seen them there, Sophie, Chiara, Asher, Ray, Dylan, Riley, Nadine, and Zay, under a tree, it had taken him right back to all those Babineaux summer parties, when they were teenagers. That had been their spot, in Aunt Susanne's yard, the location of many a harebrained plan, and from what he heard as he approached, all their group needed was a tree to sit under and the plans would come.

"… telling you, I could do it," Dylan was telling the others, keeping them – save for his concerned fiancée – in chuckles.

"Do what?" Lucas asked. They welcomed him to their cluster at once. By the looks of the various chairs and improvised seats, including some empty ones, he guessed they had been waiting for him, and Maya, and a few more who might have materialized.

"He thinks he can make that basket while jumping on the trampoline," Zay revealed, pointing from one thing to the other and displaying the not so astronomical but still relatively lengthy distance.

"Downtown Dylan!" Dylan insisted with a firm nod.

"No one calls you that," Asher tapped his best friend's shoulder with a snicker.

"They might, after I make that shot," Dylan affirmed. Riley gave all the guys her most giant 'help me' eyes. They were getting married in a little over a month, and he was gunning for a broken neck.

"That would be a pretty impressive thing if you pulled it off," Sophie declared, getting a rapid nod from Dylan and a baffled look from Riley. "It would be the kind of story you told for years and years, it would be… the summer of your big shot," Sophie nodded to Dylan, who looked ready to agree once again. But then he paused, and he looked to his future wife at his side, and something seemed to resolve itself in him. Finally, he just smiled, reaching for her hand, and her face relaxed as well as she took his. She knew what he knew, which was that this was not going to be the summer of some big stunt, no. This was going to be the summer of their wedding, and nothing else could or should come to stand in its way.

The guys nodded, impressed for Sophie's swift intervention, and they covertly 'applauded' her. Now, all they had to do was hope that Dylan would forget all about the trampoline in the years to come.

"Hey, what did I miss?" Maya asked when she came to join them, stopping to stand behind Lucas where he sat, looping her arms around his neck and resting her chin on his head. He smiled, setting his hand over hers where they met in front of him.

"Nothing much," Riley told her, likely attempting to prevent the trampoline scheme from making a comeback when they'd just sent it packing. "Where were you?"

"Just gave a quick tour of the Hex to my ninth graders," Maya replied.

"Wouldn't those be your tenth graders now?" Nadine asked.

"No, no, they're not there yet, not until the fall," Maya insisted, causing a wave of low laughter to roll over the group. "I heard it," she sighed, hugging her husband closer. She just sounded like her mother, whenever she'd 'complain' over any of her kids growing up. She couldn't help it, could she? Missy, Kai, Stella, Phoebe, all their class, they had been her youngest group, on her first year. She would get a new youngest group in the fall, and that previous group would keep climbing up the steps until they were graduated and gone, too, but she didn't have to think about that yet, nope, not yet.

"Whose turn is it now?" Chiara looked to her wife and the guys at their side. Ray moved to rise.

"Refill?" he nodded to the empty glass in her hand and she nodded back. "Same thing?"

"Yes, please," she smiled as he took the glass and jogged off to the house.

"You all have turns now?" Maya asked the others.

"They have to," Chiara told her. "If not for that, they would all come around like worried chickens," she explained, with an imitation that had the others laughing. "I tell them only one will do, but they round on me in a pack and step over one another. I appreciate the attention, I do, but it isn't necessary," she smiled to Sophie and Asher. "So, now they have turns."

"That is going to be one lucky kid," Zay affirmed, and the group agreed wholeheartedly, even as he turned to look back at Nadine.

She simply smiled back at him, though anyone who was also looking at the pair of them would understand the subtext, the fleeting thought for the child they still waited on. It had been a year of this now, and still nothing but a false hope dashed… and longing… and second guessing… Had they done something wrong? Were they just not good enough to be entrusted with a child? No matter how often their friends would attempt to reassure them, Nadine the most, time carried on stretching away, challenging those reassurances. How long could they maintain those brave faces before it all withered away? How long before it wore away at them?

"One of many," Chiara vowed, holding Nadine's gaze from across their circle. Nadine nodded, even as they could feel the resistance against tears. After a minute, by which time Ray had returned with Chiara's refilled glass, she was able to turn to Maya and Lucas and speak with an unwavering voice.

"Now what about you guys?" she asked, and the half-made question remained clear: When were they planning on having kids?

They looked to one another, a brief sort of silent exchange passing between them. They had kept all these plans of theirs so close to themselves, even telling any of their parents had demanded some consideration. But now, sitting here with their friends, it did get to feel like it wouldn't have been out of place to shift the rules a bit. Lucas tipped his head to her, as best he could with her standing behind him still. He was leaving it up to her to tell.

"Well," Maya turned back to Nadine, "Between him finishing up school after this year, and me still being new at my school, we wanted to try and time it as right as we could, as… much as we could." Naturally, they couldn't go on the assumption that they would get it right on the first try, but it didn't mean they couldn't put chances on their side as much as possible. "So, in a few months, we'll just…" she gestured, letting them finish the statement for themselves. "As soon as there's anything worth telling, you will be told."

"What are you all sitting around for?" someone shouted, and they turned to find the unexpected but thrilling presence of two more Avelino.

Kai's older siblings, twins Kamani and Keilani, had been sophomores when Maya, Lucas, and the rest of the remaining players, by then seniors, had been able to reform the basketball teams after two years without them. They had been valued players in the three years they'd played, in bringing the teams' reputations back from that sad chapter where they had been nothing. Kamani looked so much like his younger brother, which was never so evident as when they got to see the two of them near one another.

The group hurried over to greet the pair of them, with hugs, and claps on the back, and a lot of talking over one another which still managed to be relatively understandable. As it turned out, they hadn't been meant to arrive back in Austin until a couple days from now, but then they'd made it out early, and from one source to another, they had worked out that their former teammates were having a party, and that their kid brother was in attendance. So, how could they not spring a surprise on them?

"How's the little zombie doing in class, Mrs. Friar?" Keilani intoned with a smirk.

"Model student, give me ten more of him any day," Maya laughed.

"Did he tell you about his 'girlfriend?'" Lucas asked, adding air quotes for good measure.

"His what?" Kamani asked, amused and surprised.

"Did he actually ask her out? Or did she?" Keilani asked, showing how they had been just as caught up in the complicated tale of Kai and Missy's twists and turns as they figured out their feelings for one another.

"Not exactly," Maya had to explain. She might not have felt at ease sharing this information, but then they were entirely out of the realm of Mrs. Friar the teacher and back into that of family friend Maya. All she would say was that, to score Missy an invitation to the teams' end of year party, Kai had not corrected a misunderstanding, and from there the two of them had been carrying on and pretending to be a couple.

"That can't possibly end well," Keilani sighed, turning to give her twin a reproachful look almost before his smirk reached his face.

"No, I think that could work out for them," Kamani insisted. "They'll forget it's not supposed to be real, and then it just will be that. I'd bet on it."

"What are you betting?" Keilani inquired with a spark of competition most often seen either on the basketball court or in challenging her twin.

"Go on and wager, I'm not scared," Kamani responded in kind. They may not have been identical, but on some occasions, they might as well have been, and this was one of them. "Hey, before night's out, we gotta meet back there," he looked to the others, most of them former team members, pointing off to the hanging hoop with a look as though to point out that the occasions were few and very far in between where any of their gatherings didn't include some kind of shoot off or game.

"What about right now, come on," Asher nodded at him, and it was on.

The shoot off had brought along players past and present, and even non-players from among their guests. Looking on as they waited their turns, both Maya and Lucas could look to one another and know they were thinking more or less the same thing. This party, this night, felt so much like… an amalgamation of everything they had been, everything they were, and everything they were looking to be. They never wanted it to be any other way.

"Hey, it's about that time," Lucas came up behind Maya as she stood talking with Ramona and Josie. When she turned around, he nodded over to the quartet of her students. Presently, Phoebe and Stella looked on while Missy and Kai hopped in tandem on the trampoline, keeping a firm grasp on one of the other's hands for balance. Two seconds later, one of them tripped – they weren't sure which one – and they tumbled in a heap on the still bouncing surface.

"Definitely time, go, go," Maya nudged him until he jogged off. Once the 'couple' was helped off the trampoline, they came over and thanked their teacher for letting them stick around, wishing her a good night, potentially a good summer where some of them were concerned, unless they happened to run into one another in town before the fall. Maya watched them go off, eventually joined by Kai's siblings as the kids were walked back to the Sanderson farm for the night.

The party carried on some time longer, even as some of their guests, like those who had come down from Houston, had to depart. When they finally called it a night proper, Sam went off to bed, while Maya and Lucas decided to enjoy the night some more, in what they declared to be the after party.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners